💰 Setting Up Billable Rates (Cost Profiles)

The Billable Rates feature, managed through Cost Profiles, is your key to accurate client invoicing and understanding your project profitability. It allows you to assign specific rates and costs to every minute tracked.

1. What are Billable Rates and Cost Profiles?

A Cost Profile allows you to create a structured set of financial rules for your workspace. Within a Cost Profile, you can set two fundamental values for each team member:

• Billable Rate: This is the rate at which you charge clients for that team member’s time. This information is critical for generating invoices and seeing total billable amounts in your reports.

• Cost: This is the internal cost associated with that team member (e.g., their hourly salary). You can make powerful use of these costs in the Trackers Feature feature to calculate internal project margins and profitability.

2. Configuring Cost Profiles and Currency

Accessing the Settings (Admin Only)

These settings are only visible to Admin users in the workspace. You can access the configuration by navigating to the Billable Rates page from the side menu navigation.

To set the currency to be used: navigating to the Billable Rates > Configure page.

Flexibility with Multiple Cost Profiles

One of the most powerful aspects of this feature is the ability to create multiple profiles.

• You can create as many Cost Profiles as you need.

• This flexibility allows you to generate reports, invoices, and trackers using different profiles.

• Usage Example: This is essential for scenarios where you need to charge different amounts for the same team member depending on the project, client, or team they are working with.

3. Defining Rates and Costs (Teams vs. Users)

When building a Cost Profile, you can define rates and costs at two levels: the team level and the individual user level.

• You can set a cost/rate for entire teams or for specific users.

• The Hierarchy Rule: if you specify a rate and cost for both a team AND a user (who happens to be in that team), the specific cost and rate for that user is used, and the team’s default value is overridden. Always prioritize the user-specific value.

4. Where Billable Rates Are Used

Once your Cost Profiles are set up, MinuteShark applies the financial logic across your workspace:

• Invoicing: The Billable Rate information is used to accurately generate invoices. Generate a Report as you usually do, and the click the Generate Invoice button. At this point, select a cost profile, and you’ll see the resulting billable info.

• Trackers: The internal Cost Profile values are utilized in the Trackers feature to calculate margins and profits.

• Time Rounding: Billable Rates work alongside Time Rounding to ensure your final calculated amounts are based on the correct billable time.